Information technology (“IT”) environments can consist of many different systems performing processes, such as business processes, on common master data. The different systems can be part of the same entity or can be part of different entities, such as vendors or contractors. The master data used for the processes can be stored in a number of different locations, systems, and/or incompatible formats. Branch offices of a company can work largely independently, adopted companies can introduce new software solutions to a group of affiliated companies, and systems from different vendors can be linked. Different master data models can make it difficult to integrate business processes in these scenarios.
Information, such as instructions for performing tasks and descriptions of the characteristics of items and people, can be stored in machine-readable representations by data processing devices. Different data processing systems often represent the same or similar information differently. For example, different schemes for organizing, associating, storing, processing, or encoding information can be used by different data processing systems. Discrepancies in the way information is represented often hinder or prevent different data processing devices from collaborating effectively.